Acid Attack Suspects Insist They Are Innocent

Attorneys for the two men accused of plotting and executing a fatal acid attack on a Lauderdale-by-the-Sea condo manager in July 2000 told jurors Tuesday that they had nothing to do with the murder.

Both defendants testified in their own defense during the trials and tried to convince jurors that they were innocent.

In an unusual arrangement, Walter Dendy, 67, and Neal Bross, 53, are being tried by separate juries in the same Broward Circuit courtroom. Bross' jury deliberated for six hours Tuesday and Dendy's is expected to start deliberations this morning.

The two are charged with second-degree murder and face life in prison if convicted.

Leonard "Rudi" Houda, 63, died 10 days after being doused with sulfuric acid in the parking lot of a Sea Ranch Lakes supermarket. Prosecutors and detectives say he was attacked because of a long-running feud that was waged against him by Dendy, the president of a neighboring condominium association.

Prosecutors say Dendy hired Bross and another man, who has already pleaded guilty and testified against them, to ambush Houda.

And the whole thing started because Dendy had a grudge against Houda over 10 feet of beachfront property, the prosecution said.

"This is a man who festered anger," prosecutor David Frankel said in closing arguments Tuesday. "He went beyond the bounds of normalcy."

Dendy was a controlling, manipulative man who wanted to win a dispute between Souter's Resort and the Edgemar condominiums about ownership of the beachfront strip of land, Frankel said.

A saleswoman from a chemical company testified that she recognized Dendy as a man who bought 19 gallons of sulfuric acid shortly before the attack. The sale was unusual, she said, but the man told her he needed it to clean out drains.

On the witness stand Tuesday, Bross said he was innocent. He caved in and confessed after detectives threatened to lock up his girlfriend and push to have her children taken away from her, he said.

A day earlier, Dendy told his jury that he denied any involvement in the murder while he was questioned for hours. But he claimed that he confessed when he went into a stupor after taking Valium, which was prescribed for him because of a heart condition.

The prosecutor ridiculed the defense allegations that detectives railroaded Dendy and Bross into making incriminating statements. In this case, there was plenty of corroborating evidence, Frankel said, unlike recent false confession cases that have raised controversy in Broward County and pushed several departments to begin videotaping their interrogations.

Bross confessed to detectives that he was involved in the attack but said he had no idea that the acid would kill Houda. Dendy told detectives after he was arrested that he had only wanted Houda's legs broken.

But Emilio Charafardin, 50, the co-defendant who already pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, testified during the trial that Dendy wanted Houda blinded with the acid. Charafardin said that he drove with Bross to the supermarket and that Bross took a cooler filled with the acid and doused Houda with it.

One witness said she saw the assailant running from the scene and that it was not Bross.

"She told you he's not the guy and she had an unobstructed view," Bross' attorney, Robert Barrar, told the jury. "He confessed because the cops threatened him with the electric chair, to have his girlfriend arrested and her kids taken away."

Barrar argued that Charafardin's friend, local motel manager Bruce Novak, was the killer, and said some of the witnesses may have confused the name Bruce with Bross. But detectives cleared Novak, who also testified in the case, after 24 hours of interrogation.

The prosecutor said that Dendy manipulated Charafardin, a schizophrenic with a history of legal scrapes, by telling him the CIA and even the Mafia were involved in the condo dispute.

But Dendy's attorney, Fred Haddad, tried to paint Dendy as a victim of Charafardin's efforts to try to get himself a lesser sentence. Prosecutors have promised to recommend a 25-year prison term for him rather than life.

Haddad acknowledged in his closing argument that Dendy was not the best witness because of his demeanor on the stand. But Dendy is innocent, he insisted.

"Walter Dendy didn't do it," Haddad said. "He had nothing to do with it other than being Charafardin's scapegoat."

Paula McMahon can be reached pmcmahon@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4533.